


Violence In Your Heart

by SpicyReyes



Series: Widespread Delusions [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Dark Will Graham, M/M, Murder Husbands, Serial Killer Will Graham, bad metaphors and amature psychology, will is basically dexter morgan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 13:25:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20976614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicyReyes/pseuds/SpicyReyes
Summary: Sequel to Widespread Delusions:Now that he knows, there is much to learn.





	Violence In Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> WHOOPS back on my bullshit boys

The chattering of party guests created a white noise that was setting Will on edge, his distaste for crowds managing to creep back through the satisfaction of a mystery solved. 

He was suspended somewhere between dissociation and anxiety, where he imagined he would be in much worse shape if he could only get a solid grasp on his feelings at all. He was unsure if his confusion was a blessing or a curse - on one hand, he wasn’t panicked, and he wasn’t in any  _ immediate _ danger. On the other-...

“Will Graham,” a voice said next to him. “I don’t suppose you have time to comment on your suspension?” 

“I don’t suppose you will name your source?” Will countered, turning to face Freddie Lounds. “They’re wrong, anyway. I wasn’t suspended.”

“Just removed from active casework,” Freddie commented, taking a sip of her wine, eyes locked unwaveringly on Will. 

“Were you invited?” Will asked. “Or did you just sneak in to interrogate me?”

“Dr. Lecter invited me,” Freddie said. Before Will could ask  _ why  _ he would have done that, she continued, “I suspect it had less to do with wanting my company and more to do with looking friendly in front of Abigail.” 

Probably true, but Will didn’t confirm it for her. Instead, he gestured to the room around them, and asked, “Enjoying yourself?”

“Dinner parties are more enjoyable when you eat the food provided,” Freddie says. “Not many vegetarian options here, though.”

“You’re a vegetarian,” Will said, disbelieving to the point it came out a flat statement instead of a proper question. 

“I am,” Freddie confirmed. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“It’s just strange to me that someone can stomach gruesome crime scenes, but not meat.”

“I expose things the FBI would rather bury, to ensure victims get justice,” Freddie said. “And just like I refuse to let them hide things about their corruption, I refuse to pay someone to raise cows and pigs in a three foot square and drive steel rods through their eyes.”

Will was tempted to assure her that there was no beef or pork to be found in the spread, but chose instead to take a small sip of his own drink and say, “We all do what helps us sleep at night. Enjoy your wine.” 

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he turned away, slipping back into the crowd. 

Across the room, he saw Alana approach Hannibal, and eased his way closer to hear what was being said. 

“-know it wasn’t my place,” she was saying. “I just- he latches onto you, Hannibal. You’re his tether when he can’t trust anything else. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t using you to fill in the empty spaces.”

“And that I was not encouraging him to do so,” Hannibal said. His voice was pleasant and polite as always, but Will heard an edge beneath it. “I assure you, Dr. Bloom-...”

“Alana,” she corrected, sounding strained. “We’re still friends, Hannibal.” 

“Alana,” Hannibal acquiesced. “Will is in control of his own mind. More now than ever, I expect. For once he has the noise around him muted, just enough to see the world clearly, and in this world, he saw a place for me - a place which I am glad to take.” 

Will saw Alana’s lip twitch up in a small smile. “That’s awfully romantic, Hannibal.”

“Simply truthful,” Hannibal replied. “I want to be clear, Alana, that you are reading the relationship from the view that I hold the power, but I do not. It has been a long time since I stood on such even ground with someone. I won’t claim not to have advantages over him, if viewed clinically, but neither can I say that he has none over me. Either of us could break the other if we so choose - every day we persist is an act of the utmost mutual trust.”

Will finished off his wine glass, hoping that would ease the knot forming in his stomach, and eased across the floor to join them.

“Hello, Will,” Alana greeted. 

“Hey,” Will replied, before looking to Hannibal, narrowing his eyes up at him. “Freddie Lounds, Hannibal? Really?”

Hannibal blinked innocently at him, taking a slow sip from his wine glass, quirking an eyebrow in prompting. 

“Abigail wouldn’t have held you to inviting her,” Will said. “She knows our opinions.” 

“Jack finds Ms. Lounds distasteful,” Hannibal said. “However, I felt we owe her at least civility, given both her ties to Abigail, and the fact that she served as your primary source of information during the past weeks.”

Will grimaced. “Don’t tell her that,” he said. “She’ll be insufferable.” 

“Perhaps you should,” Hannibal suggested. “Prideful people tend to be more agreeable when they are accepting all attention as their due.”

“Noted,” Will said, stepping closer, brushing his arm against Hannibal’s as he stood beside him. Looking to Alana properly at last, he greeted, “Hi, Alana, sorry.”

“No problem,” Alana laughed. “Though, this about Abigail - she’s still going for that book, then?”

“Unfortunately,” Will confirmed. 

“Telling her story may be helpful to her,” Hannibal said. “To frame your trauma as a simple story allows one to view it objectively. To provide it to others and have the suffering and strength you’ve carried recognized by someone else - that can feel akin to receiving permission to heal, to release the weight you continue to carry. Abigail might find that, if others empathize with her struggles, she may be able to release some of her...less healthy coping mechanisms.”

Will resisted the urge to narrow his eyes at Hannibal - sometimes his subtlety was an art, but this was not one of those times. The only reason Alana wouldn’t follow the subtext was because she didn’t know Hannibal that well. 

And, wow, was  _ that _ a thought. Will was now the person who knew Hannibal best, possibly out of everyone Hannibal knew,  _ definitely  _ out of everyone  _ Will  _ knew. He was the one who Hannibal had opened up to, had shared his soul with. They held pieces of each other in their palms, able to bend and break them at will, just as Hannibal had said to Alana. 

Will tried to think of something to say to drag the conversation back from Hannibal’s hinting, but was rescued instead by a lightly clearing throat and a soft woman’s voice greeting, “Alana, Hannibal, hello.”

Alana turned, looking to the elegant blonde woman who had approached them. “Dr. Du Maurier, good to see you.” She gave a bright smile. “I wasn’t sure how many colleagues Hannibal counted among friends, honestly.”

“Very few,” Du Maurier said, eyes flicking to Hannibal for a moment, then - alarmingly - to Will. “And you must be Will Graham,” she said. Her gaze was cool and appraising, and horribly unnerving. 

Rats were clever creatures, Will’s father had taught him. If you put out poison for a group of rats, one of the largest ones would tend to bully a smaller one into eating it first, and stand by, waiting to see if the potential food would sicken or kill their elected victim, using another rat’s life to assure their own safety.

Du Maurier, Will thought, was one of those larger rats. 

Odd, he thought, that she knew enough about Hannibal to recognize the threat of poison. 

“Will, this is Bedelia Du Maurier,” Hannibal introduced. “A colleague, as Alana has already said. Bedelia, you’ve already revealed you know Will Graham.” 

“Hard not to,” Bedelia said. “One who keeps up with Hannibal’s activity can’t help but note his world beginning to revolve around a single fixed point.”

Will met her carefully narrowed eyes, the air between them feeling like an icy battleground, each unwilling to give ground.

Alana, seeming to sense this silent challenge, took a step back. “I’m going to mingle a bit more, if you don’t mind.”

“I should greet the remainder of guests myself,” Hannibal said, stepping close and pressing a lingering kiss to Will’s temple - every second feeling like another chip added to the pot the two left standing were gambling over. 

With both Alana and Hannibal slipping away, Bedelia raised her glass slightly, like a miniature toast.

“Hannibal isn’t one to be pulled into another’s gravity easily,” she commented. “He prefers to be the sun itself, pulling others closer until they’re near enough to burn. Odd that he should stick so close to you and not do the same damage.”

“It sounds as though you’re not fond of Hannibal, Dr. Du Maurier,” Will observed, tone carefully measured. 

“One is not  _ fond _ of Hannibal Lecter,” Bedelia replied. “He doesn’t endear himself to people, he embeds himself in them. To pretend otherwise is to say that you have any choice at all in his presence in your life.”

Will tipped his head. “He’s presented me the choice several times.”

“He will make you think that.”

Will narrowed his eyes at her. “Who are you to him, Dr. Du Maurier?” 

Bedelia gave a small, thin smile. “Someone whose retirement Hannibal Lecter lives to casually ignore,” she said. “And one who knows enough about him to recognize another person who can see the strings he pulls. I know a lot about you, Mr. Graham, I won’t pretend I don’t. You are an analyst, an empath. You look beyond what you’re seen and told to find the deeper truth.” She took a small step closer, her voice dropping down to a low murmur, speaking to him alone. “Hannibal doesn’t love, he consumes. He sustains himself on you, Mr. Graham. He builds his strength from the very sight of you. You are giving him a power beyond that he could manage alone - his sun is going supernova.”

“I’m not destroying him,” Will countered. 

“Maybe you should.”

They stared at each other.

“What do you know about Hannibal Lecter?” he asked.

She gave a small smile, took a step back, and replied, “Exactly as much as he allows me to believe. Good evening, Mr. Graham.”

She turned, then, and vanished into the crowd, leaving Will to dwell on her cryptic words alone. 

  
  
  
  


“Dr. Du Maurier,” Will said, later, when the last of the guests had finally bid them goodnight, and he was battling Hannibal to help clean up, ignoring the fact that everything he picked up was immediately scooped back out of his hands, the man insistent that Will should have simply gone to bed. “Who is she?”

“A psychiatrist,” Hannibal replied.

“To you, I mean.”

Hannibal looked sideways at him, lips quirked into what was very clearly a smirk, even from the tiny glimpse of it Will managed to catch. “A psychiatrist,” he repeated. “Mine, specifically.”

Will faltered, the answer catching him off guard. “You have a psychiatrist?”

“Certainly,” Hannibal confirmed. “I mentioned once that my thoughts can often become disorganized - my art is one way of sorting through them. Bedelia’s input is another.”

“She...doesn’t seem to like you.”

Hannibal let out a soft huff that was almost a laugh. “Dr. Du Maurier is, officially, retired. She decided not to continue seeing patients after an incident involving one. I respectfully disagreed with the choice.”

“You ignored it,” Will translated. “You- what, just force her to listen to you?”

“She could refuse,” Hannibal said. “She never has.”

“Because she suspects you,” Will said. “She practically said as much. She thinks I’m enabling you, making you worse.”

“Aren’t you?”

If Will had been allowed to hold onto any of the trash he’d picked up, he’d have chucked it at Hannibal for that. As it was, he settled for glaring, and saying, “No. You’re probably calmer than you would have been if I’d turned you down.”

“Oh?” Hannibal turned to him, looking intrigued. “You think I would have reacted poorly?”

“If I had the ability to ruin everything you’d built, and I chose to use it, would you really have given me the chance?”

Hannibal tipped his head. “I’m uncertain,” he said. It was frustratingly difficult to tell if he was being sincere. “My intentions for you have never been set in stone. Each day I crave more from you, and at the same time, nothing at all.”

Will’s stomach turned over, and he quickly returned to the subject, prompting, “And Du Maurier?”

“The incident I mentioned,” Hannibal said. “She had a patient who had violent tendencies. As a colleague, I suggested a potential path for addressing them. Though my urging led to the resolution of the issue, she was...unsatisfied with the outcome. She believes that, had she not trusted me, things would have ended differently.”

Will stared at Hannibal, picking apart the words. “You...did you kill her patient?”

“No,” Hannibal said, perfectly casual. “She did. She believes I forced her hand.”

“Did you?”

“I encouraged her to use any means to save her own life,” Hannibal said. “Her interpretation-...”

“But you set it up,” Will said. “You made sure her patient attacked her in the first place, didn’t you?”

Hannibal turned, giving Will a soft, fond smile. 

Will’s stomach turned again, a shiver running down his spine. 

“I employ a cleaning service after my parties,” Hannibal said. “They should be here with the dawn. In the meantime, I believe what we’ve done will suffice.” He looked to Will, something sparking in his eyes. “Would you like to stay the night?” 

Will knew, even as he asked, that it wasn’t really a question. 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is spicyreyes, as always, come chat


End file.
